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Don Steinbach..........

When I was heavy into my first phase of collecting in the late 70s and early 80s, once or twice a year (usually on my birthday and maybe my brother's birthday) my parents would take a few of us to Pat Quinn and Don Steinbach's Sports Collector's Store on the South Side of Chicago. It was one of my favorite places to go, because there were still very few card shops at that time, and they had all kinds of great stuff. After I got back into the hobby in the early 90s and they had moved the store to La Grange, I went there a few more times, now with a bit more money in my pocket. The last time, I bought Don Steinbach's run of annual Beckett guides from 1979 to 1990 (including both 1979 cover variants and a hardcover 1980) and his first, second, and third editions of the Sports Collector's Bible, which he had advertised in SCD as being for sale. I know I've mentioned this before on here, but since Don's name came up, I figured it was worth mentioning again.

Speaking of Don Steinbach, I just found another article about the hotel buying trips of the mid-70s, this one focusing on Eric Lange, Don Steinbach, and John Rumierz. It was reprinted from the Baltimore Sun in the Sports Collectors Digest of 10/31/75, and a quick Google search revealed that the story originally ran in the Sun on September 22, 1975. (Below my scan of the story from SCD, I've given a link to a picture of the three men from the Sun's online archives, which presumably accompanied the story.)

What's interesting about this story is that it quotes two unnamed "local collectors" who derisively referred to the three men as "dealers", and complained about how the dealers were ruining the hobby by "forcing prices up to ridiculous levels". I would dispute that claim, because people like Lange, Steinbach, and Rumierz weren't forcing prices anywhere -- they were providing liquidity and bringing a lot more cards into the organized hobby, as jsq notes, and were riding the beginning of a wave of increased demand due largely to demographic factors, as baby boomers entered their prime earning years and sought to recapture their youth through sports memorabilia.

http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/g...60113_0001.jpg

Link to picture of Lange, Steinbach, and Rumierz:
http://baltimoresun.imagefortress.co...sults_index=23

Pat Quinn, one of the smartest guys in the hobby and also one of the most knowledgable people in the hobby. Pat had some great stories about growing up on the south side of chitown. what Pat has not seen in the sports memorabilia field and cards probably ain't worth seeing.

Don had an awesome personal collection which i also personally held and perused. his wife Henny was a saint putting up with the collection/collectors. i ran into Henny many years later when i occasionally bounced back into the hobby to see old friends, Henny was a real quality human.

In 1974 or so took a friend over to see Don's collection and Don was not home. it was a saturday as i recall and don was out playing baseball appropriately enough. Henny just let us head to the basement where i showed my non collector friend what, at that time, was, and still would be one of the most comprehensive collections ever assembled. Dons collection was dispersed many years ago also as i recall after his unexpected passing. don had awesome runs of complete sets of nearly everything from 1933 forward issued by goudey, leaf, playball, bowman and topps, post cereal, bazooka, etc in addition to LOTS of complete sets from the e and t era. no lajoie, wagner or plank, when i saw his collection but he may have added them later. Don is long since passed. Don, like most collectors of that era was not a big condition fanatic. sure don upgraded haggy stuff and had huge volume go through his hands due to the hotel buying trips but he was not fanatical about condition as one of his partners, keasler was. also Don had even more complete sets of 1930's premiums and regionals from the 40's and 50's then keasler, which was saying a lot.

here again back to the topic of the existence of older cards that have not been altered. with don's cards, like all big time collectors of that era, it was all original stuff that he acquired directly from the original owner or the family of that owner, that rated vg to mt which don acquired as an adult collector. some of this stuff was acquired by the original collector and put in a box and never played with, thus pack fresh so to speak even 60 years later. other then the wagner, plank, and lajoie their was so little money in the rarest of cards that no one had an incentive to alter or play with the cards that were being acquired in the early and mid 70's.

a mint set of 52 topps walked into the philly show in 75 or 76 and went to auction and brought $1,000 at auction with a room full of collectors. gar, from nj bought that set.

i am not sure when don started collecting sets straight out of packs, if i was to guess mid 1950's aprox and after that date he of course would have awesome pack fresh condition because that was when i would guess he started opening packs for his own sets. once again the printing quality of cards from the 50's and 60's left something to be desired but their are collectors who assembled their sets from packs and never played with the cards. a lot of original quality older cards, got into advanced collectors hands.

fun memories of lots of cards, one neat aspect of the memory is when you went through another persons high end collection in the early and mid 70's, you were actually holding the cards, not a slab.

i have one card today in a slab, a slabbed card from the lionel carter collection and i think the slab is pretty neat in the respect that i can handle it with no concern of damaging the card.
i also have about 20 late 1960's yankees i found in an old scrapbook of mine haggy, but they were mine!

best of collecting,
jsq

Thanks for all if the hobby knowledge, sir. As I always say, I feel there is a ton of new to the hobby cards just waiting to be found. And Some of those will be pre-war and in great shape. It helps make collecting exciting... Ya' never know what is right around the corner....

I think the existence on high grade pre-war material can be attributed to the fact that most families did not not have the abundance of "stuff" that we all have today.

Most items that people hung on to were treasured and put away, I think that is especially true for the N, T & E era cards. The 1930's is a different matter, the scarcity obviously dates to the depression. I asked my Dad who was born in 1918 if he ever bought cards and he told me that he would have been whipped if he had spent pennies on something like that. Even for the kids that did buy them it may have been the only items they owned so they would have been handled often.

I have had this discussion with coin and stamp collectors and that is their take on these periods too.